Tangled In His Possession - Available Now!

 

Woo-hoo! This year, I actually got my spooky season story out on time! (To be fair, last year wasn't 100% my fault, but I'm going to enjoy this anyway.) Tangled In His Possession is my latest paranormal romance, and I love it so much, I have two different marketing pitches for it. Take your pick!

You know those TV movies where the uptight high-powered businesswoman has to move from the big city to a small town because of [whatever reason], but it's all worth it because she finds love? It's like that, but the love interest is possessed by a demon. Whoopsie.

OR

Longtime readers and followers will know how much I love the game Dragon Age 2, especially the Hawke + Anders romance, which is most likely my most favorite video game romance EVER. So, is this technically a modern alternate universe retelling of part of one of my favorite games? ...possibly. But hey, since I'm in charge here, it means I get to pick the ending. 

Blurb and excerpt time? Blurb and excerpt time. 

Blurb:

When her great-aunt dies, leaving The Yarn Barn in need of new management, Lucy Hawkins jumps at the opportunity to quit her stressful sales job. She moves to the quaint tourist town of Willow Vale, ready for a fresh start when she takes over the business. While introducing herself to her new neighbors, she meets Zeke, the owner of the occult shop next door. Friendly yet reserved, Zeke piques her interest, but he turns down her suggestion of a date.

Late one night, a frightening incident causes Zeke to reveal why he doesn’t want to risk getting too close to Lucy: he is possessed by a demon, an evil spirit that killed his grandfather several years earlier. Though he has been able to prevent it from harming anyone else since, he agonizes over what could happen if he loses control. Despite his worries, Lucy persists, and ultimately persuades him to allow her to provide the companionship he’s been too afraid to seek out.

They embark on a romantic relationship, with Zeke becoming the doting, compassionate partner Lucy has always dreamed of. The demon within him, however, remains a lingering concern, especially when it comes to intimacy and his fear for her safety. After a traumatic outburst, he vows to rid the world of the malicious force, even if it costs him his life. Lucy accepts his choice, but there’s one thing she needs from him before he carries out his plan. Can she convince Zeke to share every part of himself with her, demons and all?

 

Excerpt:

"I convinced myself it would be a mistake. Even last night, after I told you my darkest secrets, I believed it would be better if we avoided each other." His knuckles whitened on the countertop. "But when you touched me, the first time anyone’s touched me in years, I surrendered for a few blissful moments. Which was also a mistake, as I haven’t stopped thinking about it since."

She sensed an opening. "I could do it again, if you’d like."

A faint groan rumbled from his throat.

Shifting to the side, Lucy reached over and rested her hand atop his. His skin was warm beneath her palm, and she entwined their fingers together.

His eyes closed as he swallowed. "Why do I find it impossible to resist you?"

"Because I made a career out of being very persuasive." Her grip on him tightened. "Deep down, you know I’m right. You can’t spend the rest of your life pushing people away."

Zeke swiveled toward her, his hand slipping out of hers. "You really are stubborn."

"Yup."

"I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into."

She refused to back down, tilting her head to stare into his chocolate-brown eyes instead. "I think I know what I can and can’t handle."

Indecision washed over his face and he turned away from her. With the faintest of touches, she used her fingertips to guide his head back in her direction. Electricity sparked between them as she drew her thumb across his cheek, memorizing the rough feel of his stubble and enjoying the shudder she elicited. He leaned into her cupped palm, his hot breath floating over her wrist as he pressed his lips to her skin.

Need consumed her, both her desire to explore more of him and her wish to erase some of his anguish. "Let me be closer to you, Zeke," she murmured. "It’s okay to give in."

The intensity with which he kissed her caught her off-guard, ripping the air from her lungs. She recovered quickly, though, and planted her free hand on the other side of his face as his tongue plunged between her parted lips. The ends of her fingers threaded through the silky strands of his hair as she kissed him back with fervor, enthralled by the taste of his soft lips. His arms snaked around her waist, holding her tight.

He drew back far too soon, and she whimpered at the loss of contact. "We shouldn’t be doing this," he said, his voice strained and unsteady.

"Too late." Lucy steered his mouth back to hers and delivered a teasing nibble to his lower lip. "We already are."

Tangled In His Possession is available in paperback and on Kindle Unlimited!

Nothing to Be Afraid of Here

We're well into October, and everywhere I look, people are embracing the Halloween season. Honestly, I don't have strong feelings either way about Halloween. I mean, it's fun enough, but I was never the type to go completely crazy over it. And I'm old enough to think having leftover candy in the house is more dangerous than fun.

With that blasphemous intro, I'm sure I've lost a lot of readers by now. If you're sticking with me, thanks!

During this shitshow of a pandemic/lockdown/whatever we're calling it now, I've been trying to make more of an effort to connect with people, from reconnecting with old friends to making new ones. I've been spending more time on Twitter, for better or worse (though I still refuse to put it on my phone), and interacting with people I've "met" via the #WritingCommunity tag. It seems like so many writers have something in the horror genre, or paranormal, or anything else that can fall under the "spooky" umbrella in honor of Halloween that they're talking about and...I don't. I'm neurotic enough as it is, so my interest level in horror is so low it's practically non-existent, and while I've read and enjoyed some paranormal books/stories, it's also not really my thing. Obviously, not every writer is going to write in every single genre—in fact, it's probably the opposite in that most find one thing that works best for them and sticks with it—but it's no fun to feel left out.

But then I got to thinking about the books I have written, and their origins. And I remembered once upon a time, very, very long ago, what eventually became Elysium was originally going to be a ghost story. If memory serves, I think I saw some sort of writing contest for either Halloween or Christmas, and I got the idea of a woman somehow getting together with her dead husband. However, this was when I was in college (I TOLD you it was a long time ago!), and life was quite busy back then, and the story never got written. About ten years passed before I revisited the story idea, and I don't even remember how I made the leap from "dead husband is a ghost" to "dead husband appears via virtual reality", but I finally wrote something based on that old idea.

I've probably said it before, but even now, I still think Elysium is one of the best (if not THE best) things I've ever written. Its origins as a ghost story are way in the past, but maybe I'll choose to celebrate it this October anyway! (Should we have an excerpt of the first appearance of the dead husband? Sure, why not?)

I noticed the billowing skirt swishing against my knees. It belonged to the yellow striped sundress I’d worn to a friend’s barbecue a couple of summers ago. I’d always liked this dress, but I hadn’t worn it since.

Crouching down, I pressed against the paved trail. The stones were cool and solid beneath my touch. I reached out and tugged at a single blade of grass. It snapped off and I rolled it back and forth. A green smear darkened one fingertip, and it even smelled like grass. Incredible.

I didn’t have long to marvel at Drew’s genius, for footsteps approached behind me. Straightening, I gradually turned in the direction of the sound. What I saw froze me in place.

He wore his dark hair buzzed short like always, and his skin was tanned as if he’d never spent one day out of the sun. A plain blue T-shirt the color of his eyes stretched over his thick chest, tucked into his favorite pair of jeans. He strode toward me, every detail of his movements captured with perfection. I even saw the scar from a childhood accident spanning the top of his left hand.

He stopped a foot away from me and grinned. His lips, his teeth, his jaw, everything flowed into the cheerful expression I’d missed so much.

“Hey, kitten.”

His voice sent shivers down my spine. I clapped one trembling hand over my mouth and rocked from side to side. The corners of my eyes stung with a whirlwind of emotions and my throat tightened so much I could barely whisper.

“Kevin….”

So, Now What?

Since last checking in, the world seems a little bit less on fire, but not significantly so. Throughout the whole lockdown, I saw a lot of authors and fellow writing buddies posting on social media about how they didn't feel like writing AT. ALL, and dude, I totally get that. Trust me, I do. And even though we all have a whole laundry list of valid reasons for not being able to be creative and productive, that didn't save us from the shame spirals.

People have also been talking about "the new normal" and what that's going to look like. Considering how much is still up in the air, I think the answer is pretty much: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But even though a lot of things still suck right now, and I wouldn't say life is much less stressful than it was a month ago, maybe some of us are starting to adjust to the world in its current state.

I am still playing the hell out of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and it continues to be both the escape I need and just a plain ol' GOOD piece of fiction on its own. After poking around the fandom a bit, I started writing some fanfic. Then I wrote some more. For a while there, I was in a pretty good writing routine, for once. Which then led me to think...is it time to start applying this creative burst to my own original projects?

The answer: still ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. And then that leads into the next obvious question, what should I write? I haven't touched Sonata for Springtime since last September or so, and I already have the first third done, so that was a possibility. I've had a dystopian romance mentally plotted out for a couple years, and I'd planned on that being my next project following Hunting Astrid, but I think it's understandable that I am NOT in the mood for dystopia right now. And there's another old project/idea I thought about revisiting, which I'll eventually dedicate a blog post to, but I'm not 100% sold on it yet.

So, I thought about what's been making me so happy about and motivated to write FE3H fanfic. Although Hunting Astrid is in a totally different setting, I realized there were some similarities that made me excited about writing: fast-paced, plenty of action, and, above all, FUN. At this point, I definitely need my writing to be FUN right now. Sure, it can be fun to write darker stories, with all sorts of Very Important Feelings, and I still plan on doing that sometime in the future, but FUN is taking priority at the moment.

I could go on for another several paragraphs about the age-old "where do ideas come from?" but two days ago, I came up with the most basic of plots in the most basic of settings with three basic characters, and since then, I've been fleshing those out. I'm in no rush to start, especially since my free time is being devoted to a crocheted baby blanket that has a very firm deadline that is fast approaching, but the details are gradually surfacing, so I think I'll be good to go soon enough. I've blogged before about how I have a tendency to not write a whole lot during the summer months, but this is a new world, so who knows what will happen. But I have a plan, and plans are good. Plus, even if the writing goes slowly, I know I'm not alone.

Muse-ic

Whoops, it's been almost a month since my last post. I'll be totally honest here - I did very little writing this summer. There are various reasons/excuses, but since I can't go back in time and change things, I'm trying not to beat myself up too much over it.

For most of my past books, I've been able to find at least one piece of music that fits what I'm writing and that I can use to help get me in the mood. I'm over a quarter into Seductive Suspect, and until the other day, I hadn't thought of anything that I felt captured the tone of the book (either parts or the whole thing). My generic writing playlists weren't cutting it, either.

Luckily, my satellite radio did me a favor in the car the other day. It's not perfect and doesn't fit 100% (few songs do), but for now, it's good enough. The radio reminded me of Bob Seger's "We've Got Tonight", which I've decided, upon re-listening, is an excellent song regardless. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good piano part.


The lyrics are more in line with what I have planned for the end of the book, but it's working for now, so I'm going with it. I'll also admit that said plans include the "we might die tomorrow, let's bang!" trope that Mass Effect is so fond of. Hey, as far as tropes go, it's not a *terrible* one.... ;)

The Name Game, Part 3

Next up in this series - the meaning of characters' names.

Right off the bat, I'll start by saying that though I'm a bit of a name nerd, I don't make myself nuts when it comes to the origin and meaning of names. I didn't even really care about that when it came to naming my own children. Some people do, and that's fine. In fact, for one of my daughter's names, I was even told "Oh, I love that name, but I could never get past the meaning!" (No, it's not Cecilia or Claudia, which, for someone who doesn't pay much attention to meanings, I always remember as originally meaning "blind" and "lame", respectively.) I'm sure there are plenty of writers out there who give symbolic names to their characters based on their meaning, but it's just not my thing.

However, that doesn't mean that I'll go around slapping names on characters all willy-nilly. A lot of times, my characters names do have some significance, even if it's only for me. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but a large number of my friends wound up in the Disintegration series in some way, shape, or form. Some were straightforward: Vlad is, well, named after my friend Vlad. Dr. Zedek, however, is named after another friend's role-playing alter-ego. While the two Vlads share some similarities, the two Zedeks are nothing alike. But hey, I needed a name!

I'll use this opportunity to admit that there have been times where I've TOTALLY named antagonistic characters after people I don't like. Don't get on my bad side.

Sometimes if I'm not directly naming after someone, I'll go for a similar name, or use the same initials as an existing person/character. Like I said, the chosen name may only be meaningful to me and a couple other people, but I like knowing the symbolism is there, however minor. The main character of my new WIP is named Veronica Campbell. Some astute readers might eventually pick up on some allusions with her name (once the book is complete), but for now, I'm not telling. ;)

Out of Orbit - The Fantasy Cast

Progress on Out of Orbit is slow, but steady. I'm not at the point yet where I can say "the end is in sight", but I'm at the point where being able to say "the end is in sight" is in sight. Or something like that. :D

Anyhoo, I decided to mix things up and do something fun on the blog - list my choices for what actors would play which roles when the book is published and becomes wildly successful and the movie version is planned. (Which OBVIOUSLY is going to happen!) I've done these before, and some are easier than others. Sometimes I even have people/faces in mind from the get go to help with description. Way back when, I had no trouble at all picking actors for the main roles in The Edge of the Sphere. On the flip side, regular readers will know I've always struggled with selecting someone to portray Ro (from Disintegration and The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions), and it wasn't until the summer until I finally found an actress I thought could do her justice.

So let's see what we have so far.

Captain Jasmine Hale: For our kickass heroine, I've decided to go with Emily Blunt. I'll admit that I'm probably swayed by her role in Edge of Tomorrow, but I've liked her in other stuff, and she always seems like a cool person in interviews. Plus, she fits the physical description and I think she has the maturity to pull off the role, as Jasmine is already pretty established in her career and not, like, some sweet little young naive thing. (She's probably around my age, cough cough.)

Aras: In what's sure to be a blockbuster hit, budget will not be an issue, so it probably makes sense to use CGI for the alien species in the book. However! Real people are still required somewhere along the line. Ever since I put "This Nearly Was Mine" on the playlist, I've been hearing Aras's dialogue in Brian Stokes Mitchell's voice. (Even though Aras at one point says he doesn't have a good singing voice, and Brian Stokes Mitchell's singing voice is like chocolate-covered angels descending from heaven on golden unicorns, spreading light and love to all the world.) I guess he'd work as a face/body model, too, for our hero/leader of the fictional planet. Since Aras is about 600 years older than Jasmine, I'm not concerned about his age. ;)

Lieutenant Moore: I write often about how much I've been inspired by games, and the Mass Effect series is high on my list of favorites. If I'm going to write a pilot of a spaceship, there are bound to be similarities to Joker. And Joker means Seth Green. That was easy. Next!

Rana: Again, CGI here, but we need a person. I'm going to try to phrase this in a way that doesn't come off as negative, as I'm really not trying to be insulting here, but Uma Thurman's...shall we say, distinct features make me think of how I've described Rana. She's tall enough, anyway.

I still have a couple minor characters who I haven't paired up with real people yet, but this is still a fun list. Now back to writing! 

Out of Orbit - The Writing Playlist

Happy New Year! I hope everybody had a fantastic holiday season, no matter what you celebrate, and may we all have a satisfying and productive 2016! Me, I got a niiiiiiice chunk of writing done on Out of Orbit while Mr. Landen and I were both off from work for over a week and I have high hopes for keeping the momentum going. I'll admit I struggled with the last little bit of worldbuilding I wanted to work in, but I've finally reached the point where my universe is established and now I can just have fun within it.

Though I don't have a really firm estimate of what the final word count is going to be (I think it's going to fall somewhere in "short novel" territory), this is definitely a lengthier and more detailed project than the 20K-word novellas I've been doing recently. As such, I've compiled a list of more than one or two songs to help me get into the right frame of mind. I'm sure I'll be adding more as I go along, but for now, here's my writing playlist for Out of Orbit:

#1, Space Oddity, and #2, Rocket Man, are pretty self-explanatory. They're my usual go-to songs for when events take place in outer space.

#3, Han Solo and the Princess - I know Star Wars is all the rage right now. This still remains one of my favorite love themes. Bonus points for the space/sci-fi connection! Lucky me! :D

#4, One Second and a Million Miles - I'm still a little disappointed that I didn't get to see The Bridges of Madison County on Broadway, as its run was short-lived. I'm a sucker for a killer duet, and I love this one. I can't say the lyrics match the story I'm writing 100%, but there are enough similarities to OoO that this song has been getting a lot of airtime.

#5, This Nearly Was Mine - I'm not going to give away too many plot details yet, but this fits in, I promise. And ooooooh, did I struggle with which version to include on my playlist. I love Brian Stokes Mitchell to death and I would follow him to the ends of the earth, but -- and I can't believe I'm about to write this -- sometimes I think he may have overdone it juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust a smidge here. Oh well, it's still fantastic. And fun fact: I was in the audience for the performance! Probably the worst seats in the entire theater, but I was there nonetheless!

Jumping on a Bandwagon

Heyo! I'm alive, the babies are wonderful, but blogging and writing has taken a bit of a backseat, as I expected. Also, I am apparently a masochist, since I let myself be talked into doing some work from home earlier than I expected. Meh, I might have gone back for a few days this summer anyway. I'm hoping to finish up this big assignment tomorrow, and then I might actually get a chance to write! I've been poking around at some fanfic here and there, but my fingers are getting itchy and knowing myself, I'll probably jump right into a new original project and pretend that I'll get it done in a timely fashion.

Although I don't have much to report on the writing front, I didn't want to completely abandon my site, and I did come across something fun and relevant to blog about. A popular topic/question in author interviews is "dream casting" our books and stories - like if all our dreams came true and our work inspired a huge Hollywood blockbuster, who would play the starring roles? It's a fun game to play, and sometimes the answers come more easily than others.

Throughout the years, I've never been able to find a suitable actress that matched my vision of my beloved Ro, from Disintegration and the upcoming The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions. I've tossed around some ideas with friends, but no one ever felt quite right. Until....

Like many other people, I spent last week watching the new season of Orange is the New Black. Anyone who's spent any time on the internet since then has likely noticed all the attention actress Ruby Rose has gotten due to her role on the show. I wouldn't say I completely loved her storyline, but I can definitely appreciate her charisma and appeal. And while I watched, I found myself thinking that I might have finally found my Ro. Sure, she might have a few too many tattoos to be 100% accurate, but the rest all fits. So who cares about hype and popularity? I'm fine with jumping on the Ruby Rose bandwagon!

Coincidence vs. Influence

Back in September, I blogged (again) about those "oh, shit" moments I've had when realizing something I've written is very, very similar to something that already exists. It's happened to me a couple times, but I've reassured myself that there's always enough differences for it not to be a big deal. To recap that particular post, I'd just sent in the manuscript for The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions, had played through Dragon Age: Origins, and to my surprise/dismay, one scene in the former bore a striking similarity to one in the latter.

Sometimes the reverse happens, and I fully acknowledge what has influenced me in writing. In a very old post, I freely admitted that the setting for the interlude between Parts 2 and 3 in The Edge of the Sphere came right out of one of the games in the Myst series. It wasn't an exact replica, and I did make some changes; even if someone who was familiar with the game read that scene (or vice versa), I doubt he/she would think, "Hey, that seems an awful lot like ______!"

Then there's a third situation that sometimes occurs, and it's where I find myself now: starting to write something and not realizing until the project is underway what, precisely, were the influences that shaped the ideas. My current WIP, about two-thirds of the way done, mostly takes place in a fantasy setting. There are dragons. From this post alone, it's not too hard to tell what helped inspire me. (I think my thought process was actually something along the lines of "Man, I really love Dragon Age, and there are some kick-ass women in that series. I should write something with dragons and kick-ass women!)

I planned, I outlined, I sat down to write. It wasn't until recently that I started pinpointing the other influences that snuck in. Granted, generic "fantasy" has a lot of common elements, but I noticed some more specific similarities sneaking in. The biggest one (that I laughed at) was when I went back to do some revising, I finally noticed that my heroine bears a striking resemblance to Princess Cassima from King's Quest VI, one of THE games of my childhood.

Minus the pointy hat/head scarf thingabob

I know, I know. At first glance, the "damsel in distress" thing has been done to death. But while both Cassima and my female lead are imprisoned and technically need to be rescued, don't underestimate them. In fact, the only way to win KQVI is to sneak Cassima a dagger before triggering the final sequence so she can bail your ass out in the final battle. (Didn't give her the dagger? Game over. Hope you have an earlier save state.) As for my character...well, I can't give away everything here. ;)

I can pinpoint the influence of other books/games/movies not only in this story, but in just about everything I've written. I don't consider it a bad thing - we all have the books/games/movies we love, and as long as it's not a blatant ripoff (and who's to judge what is or isn't), it's fun to pay homage to the fiction that's shaped us. After all, no one ever sets out to emulate crap, right?

Copycats

It's been said for a while that there are no truly original ideas anymore. Which, well, maybe. I haven't decided whether I agree or disagree with that, but I subscribe to the concept that it's all about how you spin an idea and make it your own, and not whether the core ideas are similar to That Other Work.

I also believe that it is absolutely possible for two different people to come up with strikingly similar ideas at the same time. Without getting into the dirty little details, I've engaged in the Hunger Games vs. Battle Royale debate with a former writing buddy before. Now, I'm sure I'm biased as I did enjoy the Hunger Games series, and I'm also sure I wasn't as well-informed going into the debate as I could have been, as my knowledge of Battle Royale comes from friends who have read it and wikipedia. From what I've learned from those two sources, though, while the general concept might be similar (coincidentally or not, we'll never know), there are more than enough differences in execution and overall setting to make me roll my eyes at the people who are still harping on about how Suzanne Collins plagiarized another work and shouldn't be as successful as she is.

Most writers want to be regarded as having a unique voice to convey whatever scenarios their imaginations conjure, I would think. We all want to have those fresh ideas that make readers marvel, to be ahead of the trends so we can stand out. Yet, if we really are working from a limited pool, that's easier said than done.

Without sifting back through the archives, I'm fairly sure that I blogged about my "oh shit" moment when I was halfway through writing the first Disintegration and learned that it had a lot of similarities to the movie Robocop (the remake of which was in the works while I was writing). I panicked, but was talked off the ledge by a friend who had both seen the movie and knew my plans, so he could assure me there were enough differences to set me apart. No one's come after me with a lawsuit yet (or even whined at me about it), so I guess it's all good on that front.

So why this blog post now? Because it happened again. *headdesk* Since I got the contract, I went to scan through The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions just to reacquaint myself with what I actually wrote, since it had been a while. And what did I find? There's a scene in there that is quite similar to a scene in Dragon Age: Origins.

Well, damn.

It's even documented on this blog that I wrote TFotMS well before playing DAO, but that doesn't mean I didn't start second-guessing myself. I tried to remain as spoiler-free as possible, but in my perusing of DA2-related stuff, did I come across something related to that scene and it got stuck in my head? Are the circumstances not as accidental as I thought? I mean, the common thread is admittedly not the most novel of concepts, but that they happened so close together in my life had me scratching my head a bit.

I'm not going to change it, of course. It's not exactly the same, and the characters, setting, etc. are certainly different enough. Will someone come across that scene and think, "Hmm, this seems a lot like that game I played"? Maybe. But for now, I'll just stick it in the "coincidences" file and not worry too much. Suzanne Collins got past it, and I can, too. ;)

Cross Post: The Name of the Person Sharing Your Bed

I'm over at the 1Night Stand blog today talking about the inspiration for Second Skin. Well, truthfully, I'm talking more about my love for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, but I promise the two are related! Go check it out, and I'll be back here in a few days with a new, fresh, shiny post!

The Name of the Person Sharing Your Bed